Annex : road maintenance definitions and practices

Common definition
A common understanding of road maintenance implies to address the issue of the understanding of the
term "maintenance".
The basic objective of road maintenance is implicit in the word itself. It is done to ensure that the road
that has been constructed, or improved, is maintained in its original condition. It is accepted that over
the life of the road it will deteriorate due to factors with which maintenance activities cannot deal.
Nevertheless maintenance is intended to begin on the first day after the road improvement works are
completed.
In practice the effect of regular and timely maintenance is to increase the life of the road by putting
off the date at which it needs to be reconstructed.This has several benefits, the prominent being that it
stretches the period over which the benefits of theinvestment made are available and therefore
provides a higher rate of return on the initial investment. In addition, it puts off the date when large
investments have to be made to reconstruct the road.As the yearly cost of maintaining a road is a
small fraction of the investment cost, usually some 2-3%, the economic logic for effective
preventative maintenance is undeniable. It can indeed be argued that the construction of roads, whilst
consuming large amounts of money, is of limited importance if there is no effective maintenance
system.
For reasons that are difficult to assess, however, road maintenance is often viewed as an activity that
is carried out only when the road is damaged. As no one would apply this approach to his house or
even his own health, it is strange that it seems to be a pervasive attitude in the road sector.
The situation is particularly critical with unsealed roads. Here the main enemy of the road is water.
The whole concept of rural road building is to get the water as quickly and efficiently as possible
away from the road structure. This means that the camber of the surface, the slope of the shoulders,
the side drains and cross drainagestructures need not only to be constructed effectively but also need
to be kept in a condition that will permit the free run off of the water away from the road. This means
that the road once constructed has to be looked after on a regular basis. This is why routine
maintenance is so important and is the core of an effective maintenance system. The term Recurrent
maintenance is sometimes used to cover certain activities (such as light grading) which are carried out
during the year over and above the activities of routine maintenance. Periodic maintenance is an
activity that is undertaken every 3- 5 years and is concerned with rectifying defects which are outside
the scope of routine maintenance. Routine maintenance however remains the key activity. It is the
least costly but provides the greatest benefits.
Maintenance, being a recurrent activity, should be financed from the recurrent budget. The funds
allocated to it should relate to a maintenance plan which defines those roads in a maintainable
condition and, using standard figures for routine, recurrent and periodic maintenance,produces a
recurrent cost for the network.
Unfortunately, as in many other countries, road maintenance is not viewed as recurrent activity. It is
viewed as a set of projects to be carried out on roads which, because of lack of maintenance, have
deteriorated to a state where they need improvement.
The present description of road maintenance in the budget reflects the curative rather than
preventative approach to maintenance.
There is therefore a major effort required not only to develop an effective and realistic rural road
maintenance system but also to create a maintenance culture along the lines described above.
Defining road maintenance
Road maintenance is not described in any conventional manner : one budget line is 8CRE Roads
repair, which can obviously not be interpreted in routine and preventive maintenance
In order therefore to ensure that we are all talking the same language, we have felt it necessary
to define the terms we have used when discussing rural road maintenance.
We would suggest that, in keeping with an approach which is preventative rather than curative,
maintenance should be defined as follows:
Routine Maintenance - required continuously.

non-pavement related; required continually on all roads in maintainable condition (good and
fair) during the year irrespective of traffic volume or engineering characteristics.
Activities include: grass cutting, bush cutting, drain clearing, ditch cleaning, culvert
cleaning, road sign cleaning, repairs of minor damage to side slopes, levelling of
shoulders and verges.
pavement related; required at intervals during the year with a frequency depending on
condition of the pavement and traffic volume/composition.
Activities include: for paved roads, repairing pot-holes, patching, for unpaved roads,
repairing pot-holes,
Recurrent Maintenance required at intervals during the year
Activities include:
for paved roads, edge repairs, crack sealing, line marking,
for unpaved roads, grading or dragging.
Periodic Maintenance Operations - required at intervals of several years.
for paved roads: resealing, regravelling of shoulders, line marking.
for unpaved roads: regravelling or replacement of unbound macadam pavements.
Emergency Maintenance Operations required to deal with emergencies where immediate
action(s) is required to ensure roaduser safety.
Activities include removal of debris/obstacles, clearing of land slides, repairs to
localised damages road sections/structures.
In an effective system routine maintenance would be the core activity and emergency maintenance
would consume only a small portion of the budget.
This is not the current situation in Vanuatu.
In an effective system, the order of priority of maintenance activities would be as follows:
1. Routine drainage works including clearing of ditches, clearing of culverts, clearing of
bridges, clearing of river channels, repairs of erosion damage, repairs to scour checks and
other minor drainage structures, repairs of culverts and other large structures, repairs of
embankment slopes, etc.,
2. Routine pavement works including filling of potholes, repairs to shoulders, etc.,
3. Recurrent maintenance grading - gravel surfaced roads only,
4. Other routine maintenance works including grass and bush cutting, cleaning, repairing,
replacing road signs, etc., and
5. Periodic maintenance works including regravelling, etc..
Budget and means to fund and execute such maintenance scheme must be based on :
a detailed condition inventory of all the roads in the Province, with classificatio naccording to the
Road Act;
an assessment of the cost of putting the core network into a maintainable condition;
an assessment of the routine maintenance costs, means and procedures
an assessment of the periodic maintenance and means

Funding of Road Maintenance

The current situation regarding the budgeting of road maintenance could not be defined unless the
network which is in a maintainable condition is known : the actual size of the network is not known
with any precision nor its actual condition.
Any discussion of maintaining the totality of the network is therefore at this stage an academic
exercise.
Another way to look into the issue is, if the level of maintenance funding is known, to figure out the
length of the network that can be maintained according to known cost of routine and periodic
maintenance of roads.